


8:04 a.m.

by oxymoronic



Category: Marvel (Movies), X-Men (Movieverse)
Genre: Fix-It, Groundhog Day, M/M, Minor Violence, One Shot, Post - X-Men: The Last Stand (2006)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-14
Updated: 2014-07-14
Packaged: 2018-02-08 18:05:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,813
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1950942
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oxymoronic/pseuds/oxymoronic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Bobby Drake closes his eyes on Judgment Day, he finds to his surprise come morning it plays itself out all over again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	8:04 a.m.

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a few years back, and _Days of Future Past_ kicked me into finally posting it. Thanks so much to triffidsandcuckoos for the readthrough and cheerleading!
> 
> Please let me know if you enjoy! There is potential for a sequel, if there's still even a fandom for this.

It takes a while, but Bobby finally closes his eyes on Judgment Day, dawn peeking its way across the fresh-faced sky. He’s fine – a little bruised, a little battered, scared and alone in a huge, cold bed, but mostly, mostly he’s fine.

The only problem is, when Bobby Drake reopens his eyes the following morning, April 23rd plays out in front of him all over again.

 

 

 

Take two, and he thinks he’s trapped in some bizarre, awful dream, feels like he’s drifting underwater, can’t quite believe it when he finds himself standing on Alcatraz with his heart pounding thickly, dully, fiercely in his throat again. Take three, and he feels like there’s something he’s missing, some joke he’s not getting, some game he didn’t know he was a part of. Take four, five, six, and it starts to sink in that he’s stuck here, that he’s not leaving, that there’s something trapping him here out of his control.

Seven, eight, nine, and he feels sick to his gut, watching friends, enemies, people he’s never even known fall dead to the ground around him on repeat, with no discernible pattern, no logic, no sense as to who makes it through beside him. Ten, eleven, twelve, and Bobby Drake decides that he is cursed, but he’s damned if he’s going to let it beat him.

 

 

 

Part of him is ravenously curious; sometimes, he thinks he wants to push the boundaries, test his horizon, see how far he can run before he won’t snap back in place in Westchester, New York, 8:03 a.m. on April 23rd, a familiar, bright morning already underway. He thinks about boarding a plane to London, Singapore, Sydney, Brasília – but then he thinks of how it will seem if April 23rd segues quietly into April 24th, with him halfway across the world and abandoning his family and friends on the day of all days.

Some things appear to be completely beyond his control; sometimes, for instance, he makes the long, tense journey to the hangar only to find Logan irresponsive and angry at the other end, flat out refusing to let them go, to let him go, to let any of them go at all. Sometimes Bobby can convince him; other times he can’t, and he ends up curled on the sofa with a handful of kids half his age waiting for the results of Judgment Day.

Most terrifying of all is the fact that Bobby has no clue whether what he’s done different today – because try as he might, no one day is identical to the next – will be the trigger, the cause, the _whatever_ , and this will be the April 23rd he has to live with for the rest of his life. When Logan comes home with Piotr, Ororo, Kitty dead in his arms, or doesn’t come back at all, Bobby sits awake with aching, tired eyes hoping against hope they’ll be mended come morning.

Inevitably, though, the clock sets back to zero, regardless of who’s left standing at the end scene.

 

 

 

The fifth time he’s sat at Kitty’s motionless side, all sense of novelty, of interest, has drained out of him. He knows there must be something vital in this long, wearily familiar day; one moment he can change. He’s stuck here for a reason, to change the course of history, but so many things happened on this neverending day; Bobby can’t think of where to start. So many people already lost.

His first thought is of Jean Grey, but he soon decides that the moment to save her has long since passed; there is nothing he can do for her now, not with the Professor gone. She needs a telepath’s touch, and there’s none of that kind strong enough to handle her, not anymore.

Scott and the Professor are long since dead. Whilst once he might have prayed for their return, after watching the resurrection of Dr. Grey he can’t help but hope they stay that way.

When he decides there’s no chance of saving any of his fallen friends, Bobby thinks of Rogue. The cure seems to be the next obvious option; whilst he doubts he can stop its creation, or get to the source before Magneto, more than a few of the mutants at Xavier’s skipped out to take it when they thought no one would notice. Technically it requires all kinds of things most of these kids don’t have – legal ID, parental permission if under eighteen, and so on – but some of these kids spent years on the streets; they can improvise, and help those who can’t. Taking the cure would change their lives forever, and not necessarily for the better; and maybe, just maybe, he’s meant to stop them.

Rogue took off yesterday, and Bobby couldn’t find her when he tried before –

(“Come on, Iceman. Make a move.”)

– but the cure clinics are massively understaffed and hugely overrun; the idea she’s still stuck in a queue somewhere isn’t that outlandish, and it makes his stomach flutter with more than a little hope.

It disturbs him, though, that he’s less keen to stop Rogue from taking the cure than get himself home.

 

 

 

He makes it to the garage before he’s caught.

“Bobby,” Kitty says, and the sound of it crunches something small inside his chest. He knows can’t explain, can’t justify what he’s doing with any common sense – he hasn’t tried, not on any April 23rd he’s lived before, and if finding Rogue doesn’t fix things he doubts he’ll try after. He would have told Scott, maybe.

Or John. He’d have told John.

He stands and stares at Kitty in the open doorway; neither has anything to say. He could apologize, but he’s made his choice in her eyes. He could say he’ll be back before they leave for Alcatraz, but they both know he won’t be.

He slips on the heavy leather helmet and climbs on the bike. He goes, and Kitty doesn’t stop him.

 

 

 

It’s well into the afternoon before Bobby reaches the nearest clinic. Once upon a time, he would’ve marched up to the reception desk and asked for Rogue’s location as if they owed him it; but he knows now that won’t swing it here. He paces briefly along the exterior queue, turning back at the tall, glass doors, his eyes scanning the restless, vibrant crowd, but it’s only halfhearted. If she’s had to camp out she’ll be long inside by now.

He loops round to the back of the building, knocks out a maintenance man sneaking a cigarette and steals his uniform. It’s tight, pinching at the neck and the waist, but it’ll do. He pockets the clearance badge hanging round his neck; the guard was half his size and dark-skinned, and the mismatching photograph will only draw attention. Bobby forgoes testing all of the heavy keys hanging at his waist and picks the lock of the nearest monolithic steel door instead.

(“Twist, then release,” John says, years ago. He can still remember the touch of his breath on his neck, the way his fingers had rested on his own. “No, gentler. You got to tease it, but don’t let it slip you by.”)

The door clicks open against his fingers, and he steals inside.

He bluffs his way into the white-walled waiting room, but can’t see her in among the huddled pack of people; there is, however, a tacky, thick taste of sweat in the air, and more than one of them looks tired and sore from a night on the floor. He scouts the area and spots a few more people scattered on the other side of a swinging set of aluminum double doors. He makes a beeline for them, ignoring the medical staff shooting him quizzical looks when they’re not flitting between the mutants crowding the room, clutching non-disclosure forms on white plastic clipboards.

(Another life lesson from John Allerdyce, given mostly in jest years ago: “You got to walk like you own the place, see. That’s the trick. Just act like you’re meant to be there, and no one’ll look twice. Suddenly, you’re not their problem. They have shit to do.”)

He finds Rogue alone tucked down a side corridor, sat on a high, plastic-wrapped bed, her legs dangling over the edge, ankles crossed. She’s chewing her hair; she only does that when she’s nervous. She blinks in surprise when he enters, and says his name; he can’t say she looks overjoyed to see him.

He holds out his hand to her. “Come with me,” he says, quietly.

“I’m not doing this for you,” she says defiantly, but there’s uncertainty licking the edge of her words. Her eyes dart away, and not for the first time they rest uneasily on the thick leather straps clipped at intervals onto the side of the bed.

He puts a hand on either shoulder, and looks her squarely in the eye. “I know I’ve not been around, not paying you attention, and I’m sorry, but please, don’t charge into this without thinking. Chances are this cure’ll still be here tomorrow, next week, next month. Please, for now, come home, and I promise you, if you still decide this is what you want, I won’t stop you.”

She’s still chewing her hair, face tense and uncertain, her glove-encased hands wringing in her lap. The late afternoon sunlight slants through her dark hair, a little greasy and unkempt from her night away from home; a world away, Bobby Drake is setting down in Alcatraz, heart pounding, stomach lurching with nerves. Bobby hopes, with a sudden rush, that they win; if Rogue is indeed the trigger, then this is the world he’s stuck with. A lump of panic lodges in his throat.

“I dunno, Bobby,” Rogue says, eyes in her lap. “I think I – ”

“Not today,” he snaps, and guilt thumps into him as she visibly flinches. “Please, Rogue,” he says, more calmly. “Just not today.”

Her mouth sets thin and firm. “Not today,” she agrees, holding up one lilac-clad finger to his face, “but don’t think you’ve talked me out of this, Bobby Drake.”

He feels himself sag with relief; he pulls her into a hug, kisses her forehead, and for a moment his lips feel numb and wrong and her eyes flash ice-blue.

 

 

 

Logan yet again comes home with Kitty in his arms, and Bobby doesn’t sleep all night. He sits awake in the icy moonlight, running his fingers through Rogue’s brittle hair, but come 8:03 his screeching alarm is jolting him awake and he’s never been more thankful to see April 23rd again.

He knows in his gut, after this, that whatever happens, Bobby Drake must go to Alcatraz.

 

 

 

It’s only once he’s standing on the gritty, blackened ground of the island once more, faced by the ramshackle horde calling itself Magneto’s army, that it dawns on him.

“Think you can take out your old friend?” Logan asks, because the day tends to stand on ceremony, and few players deviate from their lines. Bobby nods and peels away from him.

Something brittle snaps under his feet with every few steps he takes on the rough, uneven ground. The molten wreckage of yet another car sails over the horizon, and he stops it (as before) on instinct; he finds himself hoping its owner broke free, ran, made it home safe. He remembers, rather than feels, the dry, bitter fury that filled his mind at the sight of John’s smirk, of John’s swagger, of John being so irrefutably John on the wrong side of the line; and, right on cue, John’s face crests over the bank, so certain of himself, smirking, power and rage hiding in his eyes.

And just as Bobby wearily squares himself to face him, dropping his tight, clammy leather gloves on the floor, a quiet little voice questions whether John made it out alive.

It nearly makes him lose his footing on the jagged ground; he sees John’s smirk widen as he stumbles, but he rights himself without a pause and keeps on marching forwards, his heart slowly flooding with dread. He remembers quite vividly John lying unconscious at his feet, his own thoughts still pleasantly licked at the edges with victory and rage; then nothing but a mad scramble to escape as the battle crested to his climax, as the Phoenix unfurled her wings and the island was dissolved into dust.

He has no memory of John leaving Alcatraz, and he knows the Phoenix left nothing but Logan alive.

There’s sick, hot bile rising in the back of his throat as he stands across the wasteland before him. Bobby can comfortably say at least in some way that he hates John; he’s hated John since he left him alone on a crowded jet at Alkali Lake.

But dead?

His stomach lurches as John commences his attack, and for a moment he loses his footing and the upper hand.

He doesn’t want John Allerdyce dead at all.

He snaps his focus back to the battle at hand; it occurs to him dimly that getting fried at John’s vicious hand might put a rather permanent end to the cycle of April 23rds, and not the one he really wants. He sinks his mind into a stupor, pulls out his new party trick, freezes John’s igniters, and headbutts him squarely in the forehead.

To his relief, the rest of the battle progresses much as it had before; there are no new casualties on either side, and he can feel the relief sink across his shoulders when he spots Kitty hurtling his way with Jimmy in tow. He helps her up onto the bridge, yells “I’ll follow you!”, and sprints headlong to where he left John, sprawled on the scorched floor.

The confirmation sinks low in Bobby’s gut. If he hadn’t returned – because he didn’t return – John would be dead.

Is dead.

A low rumble shudders up his calves and rattles his kneecaps; not long before the Phoenix goes critical. Standing here being maudlin over what might have been – what has been – is going to get them both killed this time. He drops to his knees, hefts John over his shoulder, and bolts for the point where the island’s ground buckles and rises under the alien weight of the Golden Gate Bridge.

He barely has time to lift foot number two before the wall of water rises behind him; then Kitty’s dragging him off to one side while Piotr lifts John out of his arms, and together they stand to watch the final death of Dr. Jean Grey.

 

 

 

He wants to take John up to his room, push him into his bed and try and chase the smell of Rogue from his sheets, but he knows has to be more sensible than that. He sets him up in the underground sickbay and sits by his side as Hank McCoy runs the same checks on John as he has on every mutant who made it back to base – except Logan, whom no one dares approach, and has no need of medical assistance anyway.

“That’ll bruise,” Hank tuts, tracing one massive, blue finger around the slight bump on John’s forehead, “and he’ll have a nasty concussion, but he’s likely to have slept it off by the morning.” He turns to Bobby and fixes him with a wry smile. “Will you let me examine you now?” he asks, and, certain of John’s safety, Bobby concedes.

And on the following morning of April 23rd, when his alarm pulls him from sleep at 8:03 a.m., Bobby stares at the thing in a blinding rage and hurls it clear across the room.

 

 

 

Bobby picks at his plastic lasagna with thin, flimsy cutlery as a familiar argument is whispered hotly around his ears. “You’re barely of age,” Piotr murmurs, his thick brow folding in anger as he glares at Kitty across the table.

“I’m eighteen and a half,” she replies, practically a hiss, her eyes flashing.

Bobby can feel the hot press of the other students’ gazes on their backs; he knows they’re all silently wondering who’ll go and who’ll stay, who else they might lose before the night is done. There had been a time when Bobby had barely known half the mutants in the room, but he’s made it a habit to pick one each and every day, sit them down and talk it through, tell them it’ll be okay, as much as the lies often burn his tongue. He knows the odds say they won’t remember when the next day swings around, but repeating these unvarying words of comfort does something to reassure himself nonetheless.

“Stryker’s assholes didn’t give a shit how old we were when he kicked down the door,” Jubilee adds, coming to Kitty’s aid. Jubilee’s living vicariously through Kitty, her right hand snapped in four places a month ago and still strapped firmly to her chest. If it weren’t for the fact she’d pose a serious risk to her teammates, Bobby knows she’d be stowing herself away in the Blackbird regardless of whether or not Logan would let her come.

He’s always envied her courage, her confidence to go against what she’s been told; it was something she used to share with John, something he himself had never had, something he’s always detested himself for. He’d been furious with John when he’d stepped out of the jet at Alkali Lake, but only partly because it was far from the first time he’d run off; mostly it was because Bobby was sick to his teeth with jealousy at his guts to do so. Trapped behind the dam were all the friends – and all the family, now – he had, not just his teachers and mentors but his classmates, too, and he was as terrified of losing them as anyone. But, as fucking usual, he’d stepped back when he should have stepped forward; he’d stood at Rogue’s side when really, what he really wanted, was John.

Bobby moodily shovels a forkful into his mouth, and regrets it almost instantly as a familiar but potent wave of nausea crests up from his gut; he’s struggled to eat on any April 23rd he’s lived through. He wonders how long he can go without food; whether if he keeps starving himself it will throw him out of the loop, or whether he’s reborn completely each and every day.

Across the room, the second hand flicks to zero. Bobby sighs, begins to count down, and right on cue the wearily familiar sound of Doug’s tray crashing to the floor echoes loudly off the walls. On any other day this would be met with applause and jeers, but today the room is thick and tense with fear; sparks begin to crowd around the tips of Jubilee’s fingers, crawl along her unbroken hand, and she’s hardly the only one in the room whose mind slides quickly into self-defense.

“Excuse me,” Bobby says, and leaves on cue, pausing momentarily to catch the ketchup bottle Kitty accidentally sends toppling towards the floor when she starts at the movement.

He pauses at the base of the stairs, listening to the mansion breathe; today, it’s barely above a whisper. He had meant to head up to his room, but the thought of sitting there alone, devoid of John, devoid of Rogue, settles a deep sickness in his stomach. He wonders what would have happened had he forgone the sickbay the night before, smuggled John straight up to his room; so different to the one they’d shared before, and unapologetically one he shares with Rogue. He imagines the knowledge settling on John the moment he walked through the door, the old aches it would invoke. He finds that the thought of that room invokes some old aches in his bones, too.

He heads down to the Danger Room, punching in his access code and running the most generic application he can think of; a beach, stretching out to all horizons, interrupted only by the soft sway of the sea. He kicks off his shoes and sits down in the wet sand, lets the warm, fluffy surf lick around his feet and fingers.

He’d thought John would come back with them, after his reckless bout of mild heroism. He’d thought John would come home. It wasn’t until he was buckling into the Blackbird and hearing the words “he’s with Magneto” that Bobby began to think that he didn’t know John at all.

 

 

“Think you can take out your old friend?” Logan asks, and Bobby nods and peels away from him.

The thing is, Bobby thinks as he walks towards John (ten, nine, eight, car. Swagger, smirk.), Bobby couldn’t blame John when he ran. John Allerdyce had had few friends in life, and for a few months – a few years – Bobby had been one of them.

And for a few months after that, Bobby had made them into something more.

John comes to a halt, squares his shoulders; his smirk grows. His fingers extend, and a ball of flame leaps into life at the crux of his palm.

He was just a kid, and John was just a kid, and in the world of traumatizing and vicious breakups experienced in one’s teenage years, this barely ranked on the scale at all – but Bobby had known John, had known everything he was, everything he’d lived through, everything he’d thought and felt and done. Bobby should have known better.

John had trusted him completely, and Bobby had casually, vehemently dropped him aside the moment Marie – Rogue – had walked through the door.

Engulfed by a wall of flame, Bobby staggers forward and clamps his hand around John’s wrists; with a heave of his will he shatters them to ice beneath his hands. Then he pauses, thinks, and kicks his legs out from under him.

John lands hard; the last of the ice trapping his wrists splinters and shatters on impact, and Bobby doesn’t miss the way it slices through his skin. “Real cute, Drake,” he snarls, spitting blood onto the soft, blackened ground. “But in case you hadn’t noticed, the whole goddamn island’s on fire. I don’t need – ”

“John,” Bobby interrupts, and his patience sours at the flash of annoyance that flits through John’s face. “Shut up.”

John’s lip curls in a sneer. “You should know I don’t answer to that name.” He makes a quick attempt to stand; Bobby knocks him back, freezes his legs to the thigh. He feels more than a little guilt at the fear that momentarily conquers John’s composure; he’s always hated the bite of ice on his skin. “You want a heart to heart, then? Hell of a time and place, you fucking idiot. I can probably do coffee on Tuesday, you know. You only have to ask.”

“I want you to come back to the mansion,” Bobby says, and John full out laughs in his face.

“Jesus, Drake, that’s a hell of a number you’re pulling there. Did your freak of a girlfriend go normal, and suddenly you’re realizing you actually like dick more than you thought?” 

Bobby has to bite down on a snarl of his own, because this is John being an ass, this is John being a child, this is John trying to get under his guard, looking for his advantage. He opens his mouth to snap back, but as he does John goes very still and very pale; Bobby swivels round to see Magneto fall cured and powerless to the ground.

John Allerdyce puts two and two together and assumes – not without reason – that the world is out to get him. “John,” Bobby says quickly, whipping back round to face him, but John’s already gone frantic, bucking and thrashing against the thick ice wrapped around his legs – and to Bobby’s surprise it begins to splinter. The kind of strength that lets mothers flip trucks. Out of the corner of his eye he spots Kitty and Jimmy; there’s so little time. “John, I _swear_ , I’m not trying – ”

– but with a crack as loud as a gunshot John breaks free of the ice and reaches desperately for the nearest fire, panic engulfing his bones. In his terror he’s lost all his control; the blast knocks them both far afield, and Bobby feels the sickening smack of concrete against his lower back before his brain bubbles into unconsciousness.

 

 

 

He’s shaken awake by a low, rumbling tremor from the ground beneath his cheek, and it settles on him a heavy dread as he realizes what that means.

He’s about to die. And as much as he’s hoping with everything he has that this curse he’s under will save him from death, he doesn’t know for sure that it can.

Maybe it isn’t meant to, he thinks. Maybe the reason he’s trapped on April 23rd is because he wasn’t supposed to walk away from Alcatraz at all _._

With a huge wrench of effort, he heaves his head off the ground and looks for John. He’s lying close by; Bobby can’t see in the half-light whether he’s alive or dead. He crawls towards him across the sloppy ground, his progress excruciatingly slow; he isn’t helped by the fact he can’t feel anything below his waist, but the smattering of deep-and-shallow cuts across his face and palms sting like fuck with every pull of his arm. There’s another long, low boom in the distance, and the ground trembles briefly beneath him. He knows exactly what’s to come; he’s watched it from far afield more times than he can count. He knows it can’t be much longer now, but he’s so close, and he can’t afford the energy to crane his neck and look.

“John?”

He lies immobile as Bobby comes close, and the moment he can reach Bobby presses his fingers against the insides of John’s wrists. Slow, sluggish, but still there, or just about. For a moment Bobby lies curled in an ugly curve beside him, tugging in a last few breaths before hooking his hand on John’s shoulder and turning him towards him, one last, groaning pull of his arms that leave them aching and weak. John’s eyes are glassy, but he’s still conscious, or thereabouts. Bobby smiles at him faintly, but there’s no reply.

There’s a long, quiet pause, cracked in two by another, fiercer rumble; closer, stronger. A great wall of water rises beside them; they have but minutes left. John’s eyes clear a little, focus on him, and Bobby’s mouth goes dry.

“I’m so sorry, John,” Bobby manages, hoarsely. As he leans in towards him the Phoenix spreads her wings, and moments later they are nothing.

 

 

 

He pulls in his first breath on his fifteenth April 23rd, and he’s never been happier to hear his tinny alarm clock’s caterwaul. He’s wonderfully, joyfully, brilliantly, definitely _alive_.

 

 

 

“Think you can take out your old friend?” Logan asks, and Bobby nods and peels away from him.

He feels eerily calm as he walks across the island’s ground, sights John making his way towards him. (Ten, nine, eight, car. Swagger, smirk.) John stops, squares his shoulders. His smirk stretches a little more.

As they fight, Bobby falls back, allows John the upper hand; he drops to one knee, braces himself for the effort, and then when the moment comes he snaps his hands around John’s wrists and coats them in ice, as gently as he can.

There’s fear in John’s eyes when Bobby stands, but Bobby merely leans in closer and kisses him.

John is quiescent under his hands when Bobby pulls back. “I’m sorry,” he says, quietly. “Come home. Please. With me.”

“I,” John says, and shakes his head, a hard, fast movement, as if to shake clear his thoughts. Bobby steps back, lets go of his wrists, his heart in his throat. “Christ, Drake,” he says, and shakes his head again, slower, disbelieving. John stares at his hands, his feet, the ground, working it back and forth in his mind. “After all this?” he says, quietly, gesturing around him with one hand.

Bobby nods, throat thick and clogged. “Yeah,” he manages, and the word is so mangled the first time he has to croak it out again. “I’m sorry,” he adds again, stronger and clearer, and he can tell from the disbelief in John’s eyes that he knows he means it.

“You’re sorry,” John echoes, eyebrows raised.

Bobby takes half a step forward, grabs John’s hand, tries to find John’s eyes, but they’re turned away, down on the ground, one foot scuffing nervously against the other. “I was an asshole,” he adds, firmly. “I _am_ an asshole. And – I’m sorry.”

Every inch of John’s body had been bristling with fire, with rage; but as Bobby watches he sees the wrath drain out of him, sees the fury deflate in him. He looks exhausted, weary, weather-worn. He looks so young. John nods slowly, his mouth still a tight, firm line. “Rogue?” he asks, but Bobby doesn’t flinch; he can’t say he didn’t see this coming. But it had occurred to him some time ago, sometime in the endless cycle of April 23rds, exactly where his loyalties lay, and it had shocked him more than a little to realise they had somehow fallen with John.

And so Bobby shrugs, and shakes his head, and steps forward when he could have stepped back, when he had stepped back before. “We’re done.”

John reaches out, steals a flicker of flame from a nearby wreck and lets it run loose around his fingertips, wind up and down his hand, melting the last remnants of the ice around his wrists; Bobby can’t help but remember the last time they stood like this, fire in John’s hand, but he’s seen John do this countless times before. Like Rogue chewing her hair. John breathes in, and out, thick and slow, and then – “No.”

 “No?” Bobby echoes, his gut plummeting to the floor.

“No,” John confirms, quietly, after a millennium has drifted by. “I’m not gonna – ” John gestures around him. “ – but I’m not going back to New York.” He shrugs, extinguishes the flame in his hand in a clenched fist and returns to staring doggedly at his feet. “I know for you it’s perfect – but. I just – ”

Hank’s “ _everybody get out of here!_ ” reverberates around the tiny island, and they pause, snapped from their own small rêverie. Bobby stares at John, mouth dry but eyes burning, his throat one hot, solid ball of disbelief. As much as Bobby knows there will be another April 23rd, knows he will get another chance, his very bones feel aching and worn. He just honestly doesn’t know what he’d say – do – differently the next time around.

“Okay,” Bobby says softly after a while, biting back against the quiver in his voice, blinking down hard against his burning eyes, his body slumping in defeat. “If that’s – what you want. Then okay.” John finally, finally meets his eye, mouth a little slack, and Bobby can tell there’s something he wants to say pressing up inside his throat; but he shuts his mouth, looks away. There’s a long, low, rumbling tremble from under their feet, and Bobby’s mind jerks back from melancholy, remembers where they are. “We should...” He gestures at the bridge behind and glances away, down at his feet. “It’s not safe.”

John casts a final, slow look around, nods, and they walk to the lip of the island in silence. Bobby pauses, as he always does, to help Kitty haul Jimmy and herself free; John waits for him, stands awkwardly to one side with his eyes over Bobby’s shoulder on the looming figure of Jean Grey. Kitty slides Bobby a look, one eyebrow arched quizzically in John’s direction, and all Bobby can do is shake his head; he’d like to say she looks sympathetic, but in truth he knows that’s not the case. John has no one on his side but him.

Piotr and Ororo come to their side, and they spend a moment fussing over Jimmy before turning back to Alcatraz; and whilst none of them misses the vitriolic glare Piotr slants in John’s direction, it’s only Bobby who sees the way John slumps when the others look away. The crowd of mutants, soldiers and X-Men mills around them, craning their necks back for a better look at the action, but Bobby can’t take his eyes off John, worn and tired and alone. A kid who had his rage fanned rather than drained from him, pushed out from every place that purported to be his home, now transformed into the enemy, a fugitive, a criminal.

Bobby did this, he realizes, and the knowledge drags cold hard fingers down his spine.

John glances over, catches Bobby staring, and raises his eyebrow. “What?”

Bobby shakes his head. “Where are you gonna go?” he asks, and John shrugs, his eyes flicking back to Alcatraz in time to see familiar colossal walls of water rising above their heads. He’ll be chased, Bobby realizes, wherever he tries to run to. He’s done too much too publicly for them just to let him go. John’s not an idiot, and if this has occurred to Bobby, it’s occurred to him. “Wherever you choose, you won’t be safe,” he says.

John shoots him a look. “What, and I will be in New York? You trying to tell me they won’t lock me up as soon as look at me?”

Bobby can’t find the words to argue, and he knows that if he could, his delivery would be half-hearted at best; John has a point. But there’s a pressing, hot fear winding up in Bobby’s throat, and in his mind’s eye he can’t see anything but John sauntering from the jet at Alkali Lake, can’t even face the idea of John walking away from him again.

A long, low, rumbling roar; Logan’s familiar, grief-wracked shriek; the walls of water tumble back towards the ground as gravity rips them gleefully from the control of Jean Grey. That’s it, Bobby thinks; battle won. He sees Kitty turn away and press her face into Piotr’s side; Ororo’s fingers curl around Hank’s wrist as she looks away, her eyes full of tears. Only John still has his empty, sad eyes trained on the island of Alcatraz, but Bobby can tell from the familiar blank glaze that his mind is far away.

“Can I come with you?” Bobby says quietly, and John’s eyes snap to him, mouth open, face flooding with surprise.

“What?”

“Not if you don’t want,” he says, so quickly he stumbles over the words. “And not forever, I mean, with college and the Institute and – ” He cuts himself off, shaking his head, rubbing at his eyes. “I want to,” he adds, firmly, desperately. “Please.”

John’s gawking at him, mouth slack and gliding noiselessly over a dozen half-formed syllables, when reality settles on those around them. “Bobby,” says a voice, and a hand alights on his shoulder; Ororo. Bobby swallows, tears his eyes from John, desperate to buy them a little more time, but though her voice shakes almost imperceptibly her grip is unforgivingly firm. “Time to go.”

He can feel the way John is being studiously nonchalant at his side, the way his shoulders slump and fall, tries to make himself look small and insignificant in the midst of the raging tumult of mutants and men. Bobby looks into Ororo’s face, sees the grief and the rage and the sheer exhaustion, manifested in the tiny wrinkle that sits on her forehead, and his gut squirms at the thought of leaving her, after she has lost all but everyone she knows. The faint _thuk-a-thuk_ of helicopter blades rips through the dawn-licked air, their source blitzing through the sky towards them; Hank, Bobby guesses, and watches it approach with absent eyes. He resists the slight pull of her fingers; Ororo’s eyes flick from him, to John, and back again, and knowledge settles in them.

John takes a step back, begins to walk away. Bobby reaches up, detaches Ororo’s hand from his shoulder, turns his back to Alcatraz, and follows.

He hears Kitty call out his name; he closes his eyes, keeps walking. He catches up with John after a handful of paces, and John stutters to a halt, his eyes wide with surprise, glancing back over Bobby’s shoulder at the ‘copter still squatting on the bridge. “I missed my flight,” Bobby says, works hard to keep his tone blithe, pairs it with a nonchalant smile.

John looks at him, long and hard, and though his gaze is strong it isn’t angry or cruel. “You sure about this?” he asks, after a while, his voice soft and a little hoarse. “They might not welcome you back.”

Bobby shrugs a little, feels his smile grow to cleave across his face; a huge, fantastic, shit-eating grin. “Do I have a yes, then?”

John shakes his head, mutters that he must be losing his mind, but when he nods towards the city with a half-hidden smile and a mumbled “c’mon” Bobby’s pretty sure that he does.

 

 

 

They pick their way across the abandoned bridge to the far side, dropping down onto the edge of the city. San Francisco is hardly a place Bobby knows well, but John quietly follows the smell of money until they find themselves in front of a hotel expensive enough not to question their strange, disheveled clothes once Bobby pushes his Xavier’s Institute-funded credit card across the shiny receptionist’s desk.

They enter the room in silence, and though Bobby’s bones ache for a shower he collapses straight on the bed instead, tries to peel himself out of his cloying, bloodied uniform; John’s clothes fall beside his, equally soaked in the stench of the battle they’ve come from.

He limpets onto John the moment the light goes out, and though gets a muttered “Christ, Drake” for his troubles, John doesn’t pull away.

 

 

 

For the first time in just over two weeks, Bobby doesn’t wake alone. He’s woken by the gentle press of sunlight against his eyelids, and when he opens his eyes the time on the alien clock beside him reads 8:04 a.m. There’s a whole world of difference in that tiny, insignificant minute. He can’t help but imagine, with a little relish, his own alarm clock shrieking out into an empty room, a world away.

He rolls over to find John watching him, either shaken by his movement or – as the heavy bags under his eyes would suggest – already long awake. His expression is impenetrable; Bobby raises his hand, runs the pad of his thumb along his cheekbone, hidden under a scruff of dirt and paper-thin, pale skin. “Hey,” he says, and for a moment John’s smile is free and unashamed before he glances away.

 “You smell like my ass, Drake,” he mutters, and Bobby laughs and snatches a kiss from him, before dragging himself out of bed and dumping the final remnants of his uniform aside to take a shower, straight on the floor. He’s reminded with a quiet thrill how much that always pisses John off.

He doesn’t miss the somber, distant look that assembles itself on John’s face as he leaves.  Bobby knows the quiet, unrelenting thrum has already kicked awake in the back of John’s mind, planning his next move, calculating how soon before he has to run; he’s had it since he was eight years old, since he realized he could no longer rely on anyone other than himself. It will take so much more time and patience before John begins to believe he can trust him once again; and as much as it’s already a pretty fucking huge concession that John’s lying in this bed and not on the cold concrete floor of Alcatraz, it will have to be the first of many more.

Bobby has no idea how much trouble John is in; and whilst he’s certain the most definite protection he can offer him is inside of Xavier’s, he can’t imagine a world where John will be happy there, forever the subject of snide looks and thinking himself trapped at Bobby’s side. But Bobby can keep him safe out here, for a while; and a while might be all he needs, enough to calm John’s mind, to undo some of the damage that has been done.

Bobby smiles, and tilts his face up into the spray. It’s Saturday, April 24th, and Bobby has no idea how this day ends. He’s in an unfamiliar city, a world away from all the family and friends he has known, with no plan or purpose, with no rhyme or reason to his thoughts or words; but he has John at his side. And that’s definitely enough of a future for him.


End file.
